34 – week 1

So, in an effort to keep the blog engine running (I’ve been slacking way to much lately), I thought I’d try another experiment.  My birthday was last Sunday.  I figure that if I can at least do one post a Sunday as a week in review for this year of my life, it will help keep the content going (and maybe help me isolate more material for some targeted posts).  I only hope they don’t all turn out to be really boring.

Morning is the best time of day to write something like this too.  Since they are reflective by design, it would be good to get them put together before mass (most weeks we go to noon) where I’ll be looking back over the previous week anyway.  That’s easier said than done.  Case in point – since starting this post, I’ve had to take a break to go camping with a very imaginative little girl.  (Her pretending is very elaborate and I’m often in trouble for missing a detail or forgetting who I am).  Anyway, let’s stop talking about the posts and get on to looking at last week.

As I mentioned earlier, this week started with my 34th birthday.  It was simple and understated, yet enjoyable.  Mom and Venu were in for the weekend and on the 15th, we had a great lunch with them and Tiff’s parents.  Her dad’s is the 14th, so the “party” was for both of us last Saturday.  Also, for my birthday, Tiff and the kids got me a bike.  It sounds corny, but I was just as excited about it as I was when I was a kid.  By Sunday afternoon, Keith had me ridding around the neighborhood with him.  It was a lot of fun.  I love how much he just enjoys spending time together.  My hiney, however, was not as big a fan of it as I was.  It seems that while you never forget how ride a bike, your posterior sure forgets what it feels like to do so.  I’m only hoping gel seats and time will solve that “situation”

The work week got off to a rough start. I was battling some stomach issues all day Monday and by that night, they caught up to me in full force. (my poor car ) I pretty much stayed hidden under a blanket all day Tues.  That threw a bunch of stuff off for me this week, but I evidently needed the rest.  So, we’ll call it a moral victory and move on, I suppose.

Work was very interesting.  Our community relations folks are getting me to sit on a board for a non-profit here in town.  (I don’t want to go into details yet since I still have to interview and all that)  One of the things they are doing for several of the Rackers who are on (or will be) boards is training/sharing sessions to know what to expect and how to be effective in the role.  This took place around lunch time every day last week.  I really enjoyed it.  I’m looking forward to helping a cause that I think does good things and to get the exposure to being on a board of an organization.  I’ll fill you folks in on more details as they come.

Also, last weekend, we announced that Robert Scoble was joining us.  If you aren’t familiar with him, he’s a well known blogger and social media celebrity.  He, and his producer Rocky Barbanica are going to be working on a new project for us called Building 43.   They are really interesting folks to visit with.  Last year they were down in San Antonio and shot a video with Graham Weston, our chairman, about our new headquarters.  Then Robert came over to do a Q and A session with folks from work.  We were broadcasting the event on our company “radio” station, so he had Rocky fire up the camera and ended up doing a short video on it.  A year later, I got to turn the tables and interview the two of them on that same “station” for Rackers to hear why he joined us and what Building 43 is all about.  Graham and some other folks visited with us too.  There were several cameras taking snap shots.  I’m hoping to get pictures soon.  Maybe I can do a post on the company blog about it with those.  We’ll see.  Anyway, it made Thursday really interesting!

Outside of work, I did my best to keep up with all the goings on in the world.  It seems like the hot topic du jour was the AIG bonuses.  I could go on and on about all the nuances, but that’s probably better served for another blog post.  The part that really concerns me is the punitive taxation.  I agree the whole situation is something akin to a fresh cow paddie on a hot summer day, but the last thing I think we want is for the Federal government to have the authority to target specific groups with a different tax rate – especially retroactively.  It’s just bad.  I’ve seen articles that the put the White House on both sides, so I’ll be watching this one.  One of my biggest frustrations with the last administration was the blatant violations of the Constitution.  I was hopping this one would correct some of them even though I don’t agree with Obama on most policy issues.  I would hate for us to see yet another President find more ways to infringe on civil liberties and work against the document he took an oath to uphold.  We’ll have to see what happens in the Senate this week and how the White House responds.

Keith’s first soccer game of this spring league was yesterday.  He still seems hesitant to get to the ball, and when there paths cross, he doesn’t do the best job of kicking it like he means it.  We’ll have to work on that.  The poor child has a father with no athletic ability and very little competitive drive when it comes to team sports. So, I can’t really fault him or anything.  He enjoys it, though, and he always seems to make friends on his teams – that seems most important.  Maddie was looking stylish for the game, though:

Maddie looking "stylish" at Keith's Game

The rest of Saturday was spent working on the garage.  We’ve had two similar sessions before where we cleared out part of it, painted and organized.  Yesterday was a huge step forward.  Not only did we get a major chunk cleaned up and painted, we can now park Tiff’s car in there.  I thank that’s a first since we’ve owned a home (about 6 years now) See:

We can now park a car in there!

There is still a bit to do, but it was great progress.  I’ll have to see if I can finish before the baby comes.  The kids had a lot of fun bouncing between helping and playing.  I got some cute pictures of all that.  I’ll try to get them put together and out on the interwebz soon.

Well, there you have it.  The first week of 34 – or at least some highlights.  And, I finally got another post up.  It seems week (kinda like me after playing soccer with Keith’s team and some of the dads at the tail end of practice on Friday – out of shape fail for me), but I’m happy to have forced my self to sit down and finish a post.  Maybe I can get in this week and get one of the drafts I’ve been dabbling with wrapped up.  We’ll see.  Either way, it will give me something to add to the list for week two.  Night all!